Hillary Clinton reminded us it takes a village to raise a child and now we’ve learned it takes a ridiculous fee to impact a bank

I’m a supporter of the Occupy Wall Street movement because America is in a money mess of enormous proportions on a host of different levels. I also think that had that movement not been in place, Bank of America’s desire to impose a $5 fee on their customers for using their debt cards would have gone largely unnoticed.

To be fair, Bank of America wasn’t the only institution considering the fee. Others, like Wells Fargo, were testing the waters while still others already had such fees in place.

But thanks to the very visible realization that ordinary people are so fed up with all the financial chicanery of the banking industry, Wall Street institutions and Congress that are willing to mobilize, stage stay-in’s, marches and rallies around the country that the message of “Enough is enough!” is finally being heard.

So it ought to come as no surprise that results from a recent Harris Interactive poll, that last month asked 2,463 online adults about specific banks, found Bank of America’s customers to the least satisfied when compared with other major banks.

Worse yet, nine percent of that bank’s already existing customer base were “not at all likely” to continue to use the bank. That’s gotta hurt.

And it did. So much so that the bank caved and decided to do away with that five buck fee that was to be put in place in January.

Of course we all know that Bank of America, and others, will find additional ways to impose fees for their services and all will stink.
The other night on The Colbert Report, Steven Colbert said Bank of America was probably going to charge $6 to take away the proposed $5 fee.

His humor was dead on. And so has been the move people have made from banks to credit unions since the end of September when Bank of America announce the new debit fee.

According to the Credit Union National Association, 650,000 have joined credit unions since September 29, bring with them $4.5 billion in new savings accounts.